What if you gave yourself a chance to do it over again?
This was the thought weighing on soon-to-be Illinois State University graduate Allison Isley's mind back in 2020. While the world was slowing to a stop for the COVID-19 pandemic, Isley and the company she was with in the Illinois National Guard were gearing up for a nine-month stationing in Washington, D.C.
It was during that time — a largely difficult, isolating period — that everything began to crystalize for the aspiring music teacher.
"I was really lonely and I was kind of struggling, but I found some people in my unit that were making music every Friday. ... I started going to that and singing and playing mandolin with people for nothing more than the fact that it just felt good," Isley said in an interview. "When I came home, I just knew... I want to go back and teach music because I just wanted to share that with people. I want people to learn that, whatever form it takes, that music can really just honest-to-goodness save your life, if you needed it to."
Some 10 or so years after Isley first graduated college with a degree in journalism at Southern Illinois University- Carbondale, and after a string of unsatisfying jobs in a field she didn't enjoy, Isley is set to walk across ISU's stage on Saturday's winter commencement with a degree in music education — a signal of the second chance she gave herself to pursue what she really wanted.
"Everyone told me, you know, like, 'Music teachers always get cut, and you won't make any money.' And I was like, you know what? I'm not making any money anyway. So I'm going to go and I'm going to go get the degree in the thing I want to do," Isley said. "And then I'll go make no money, but I'll like my job."
Becoming a nontraditional undergraduate student at ISU was a commitment to an experience that could be a “little weird.” At SIU, Isley said she was used to seeing an older population, due in part to the large number of veterans in the student body.
At ISU, she often was the oldest student in the class.
Then, after a single semester back in school, Isley and her husband learned she was pregnant.
“Three weeks after we found out that we were going to have my son, my husband found out he was going to get deployed in three months for a year. It was a stateside thing, so at least he was in the same time zone, which is always a blessing,” she said. “So, [I] went back to school at 30, pregnant, by myself, and then had [my son] in January of my second semester. It was interesting.”
There were, of course, times Isley wondered if pursuing this path was worth it. Part of the draw of attending ISU had been the opportunity to have a second chance at college: Her first go-around, she said, didn’t turn out the way she hoped, and she wanted to prove to herself that she could do as well as she thought. In this respect, being an older student helped.
“I kept thinking of it as, ‘The first round was a mistake and I’m here trying to fix that way late in life,’” she said. “I try not to think of it that way now, though. The more I’ve done it and gone through this I’ve realized I would not have made a good teacher when I got out of college. … She would not have put in the work that she needed to do to be really good at some of this”
Being [temporarily] a single parent, a college student, a service member and a first-time mom came with its challenges, but Isley said she persevered, in part, because she wanted to set an example for her son. She credited her ISU professors for making some of that juggling a little easier: In a program with few online course options, Isley said some courses were put online for her so that she could continue to take classes after giving birth.
“I hope that he'll see that I tried to do hard things to give him a better life and any future kids like hopefully see that it's OK to change who you think you were, because who you are at 20 and who you are at 30 or two different people — and that's OK,” she said. “It should be: If you're the same person at 30 as you were at 20, you haven't really grown, right?”
What her future will look like post-graduation is a little unclear. She has seven years left in her service with the Illinois National Guard, where she is a company captain and a Blackhawk pilot. A student teacher at Benjamin Elementary in Unit 5 and at Bloomington Junior High School in District 87, Isley said she learned she loved working with little kids as well as middle schoolers — the latter coming as a “delightful surprise.”
“I feel like our biggest job is teaching a love of music. That doesn't always necessarily mean that they're going to want to go be in bands or choirs, but I want them to feel confident and in love with music in a way that they’re like, ‘OK, well, I'm going to go pick up a guitar and teach myself,’” she said. “I just want to see them stay involved in music in some capacity for the rest of their life, or to know that they have those skills and feel like they want to go seek out those choirs and those bands, or whatever it is that they do.”
Isley is a self-taught musician herself, though she took piano lessons when growing up and learned to play the organ for her church. At various points since, she’s picked up guitar, ukulele, the mandolin and had a short-lived stint with the fiddle. She was also part of a group that started ISU’s first-ever bluegrass ensemble, a program that’s still going.
Mark it as just another item in a list of things that’s made her grateful she gave herself a second chance.
“If I have learned anything, nothing in my life has gone the way I thought. This was the third time I applied to ISU. I was accepted at one point, turned down at another point because of screwing up the first time. I never expected to be where I am, so I just keep going with the flow and seeing what fits,” she said.
“I have no idea what I will end up in. I want to go find ways to bring music to more people. I’m going to see what opportunities present themselves because that’s kind of how life goes. As long as I’m making music with somebody and figuring it out, I’m not going to be too picky.”
Isley will be one of more than 1,300 students celebrated at ISU’s Winter Commencement on Saturday. She also will be one of 40 students graduating with ties to the military, either as a veteran or National Guard or Reserve member.
“I know I got real lucky, and life worked out in some ways, like some things lined up," she said. "You can't always make the changes you want to, but I think if you have the opportunity, or if you're thinking, ‘Maybe I could, and it just might be hard for a while,’ I think it's worth it. It's worth it to take a chance on yourself.”
